fill the empty space. You get ripples. That's what causes timequakes. Time-travelers.'
It sounded like bullshit to me. Except for the evidence. Everywhere there were animated signs-huge screens with three-dimensional images as clear as windows, as dazzling as searchlights. Around us, traffic roared, great growling pods that towered over my much-smaller convertible.
'Shit. All this is your fault?'
'Mostly. Yes. Now, put the car in gear and drive. This is a restricted zone.' Eakins pointed. 'Head west, there's a car sanctuary at Fairfax.'
If he hadn't told me this was Santa Monica Boulevard, I wouldn't have recognized it. The place looked like Tokyo's Ginza district. It looked like downtown Las Vegas. It looked like the Alice in Wonderland ride at Disneyland.
Buildings were no longer perpendicular. They curved upward. They leaned in or they leaned out. Things stuck out of them at odd angles. Several of them arched over the street and landed on the other side. Everything was brightly colored, all shades of Day-Glo and neon, a psychedelic nightmare.
Billboards were everywhere, most of them animated-giant TV screens showed scenes of seductive beauty, bright Hawaiian beaches, giant airliners gliding above sunlit clouds, naked men and women, women and women, men and men in splashing showers.
The vampires on the street wore alien makeup, shaded eyes and lips, ears outlined in glimmering metal, flashing lights all over their bodies, tattoos that writhed and danced. Most startling were the colors of their skins, pale blue, fluorescent green, shadowy silver, and gentle lavender. Some of them seemed to have shining scales, and several had tails sticking out the back of their satiny shorts. Males? Females? I couldn't always tell.
'Pay attention to the road,' Eakins cautioned. 'This car doesn't have autopilot.'
His reminder annoyed me, but he was right. Directly ahead was -I couldn't begin to describe it-three bright peaks of whipped cream, elongated and stretched high into the sky, two hundred stories, maybe three hundred, maybe more. I couldn't tell. Buildings? There were lighted windows all the way up. Patterns of color danced up and down the sides. Closer, I could see gardens and terraces stretched between the lower flanks of the towers.
'What are those?'
'The spires?'
'Yeah.'
'The bottom third are offices and condos, the rest of the way up is all chimney. Rigid inflatable tubes. The big ones are further inland, all the way from South Central to the Inland Empire.'
'Those are chimneys?'
'Ever wonder how a prairie dog ventilates its nest?'
'What does that have to do -?'
'The entrances to the nest are always at different heights. An inch or two is sufficient. The wind blowing across the openings creates an air-pressure differential. The higher opening has slightly less air pressure. That little bit is enough to pull the air through the nest. Suction. Passive technology. The chimneys work the same way. They reach up to different levels of the atmosphere. The wind pulls the air down the short ones and up through the tall ones. The air gets refreshed, the basin gets cleaned. Open your window. Take a breath.'
I did. I smelled flowers. 'You can't see it at night. During the day, you'll see that almost every building has its own rooftop garden-and solar panels too. The average building produces 160 percent of its own power needs during the day, enough to store for the evening or sell back to the grid. With fly-wheels and fuel cells and stamina boxes, a building can store enough power to last through a week of rainstorms. Turn left here, into that parking ramp. Watch out for the home-bus - '
'This is Fairfax?'
'Yes, why?'
Shook my head. Amused. Amazed. The intersection went through the base of a tall bright building, Eiffel Tower shaped and arching to the sky, but swelling to a bulbous saucer-shape at the top. At least thirty stories, probably more. With a giant leg planted firmly on each corner of the intersection, the tower dominated the local skyline; traffic ran easily beneath high-swooping arches. The parking ramp Eakins had pointed me toward was almost certainly where the door of the Stampede had once been. Where the door of the mortuary that replaced it had been.
We rolled down underground. Eakins pointed. 'Take the left ramp, left again, and keep going. Over there. Park in the security zone. This car, in the condition it's in, is easily worth twenty. Maybe twenty-five if we eBay it. We can Google the market.'
'Urn, could you do that in English?'
'You can auction your car. It's worth twenty, twenty-five million.'
'Twenty-five million for a car?'
'For a classic collectible '67 Mustang convertible in near-mint condition with less than twelve thousand miles on it? Yes. I suggest you take it.' He added, 'Part of that is inflation. In 1967 dollars, it's maybe a half-million, but that's still not so bad for a used car that you can't legally drive on any city street.'
'That's a lot of inflation -'
'I told you, this is the post-world.'
'Post-what?'
'Post-everything. Including the meltdown.'
'Meltdown -?' That didn't sound good.
'Economic. Everyone's a millionaire now-and lunch for two at McDonald's is over a hundred and fifty bucks.'
'Shit.'
'You'll learn.'
Eakins directed me to a large parking place outlined in red. We got out of the car, he pulled me back away from the space, and did something with some kind of a remote control. A concrete box lowered around the car, settling itself down on the red outline. 'There. Now it's safe. Let's go.' We headed toward a bright alcove labeled Up.
'Where -?'
'Your new home. For the moment.'
'What are you going to do with me?'
'Nothing. Nothing at all. I already did it.' He put the same remote thing to his ear and spoke. 'Get me Brownie.' Short pause. 'Yeah, I've got him. The one I told you about. No, no problem. I'm bringing him up now. He's a little woozy-hell, so am I. I flashed a Mustang. No, it's great. A '67, almost cherry. Make an offer.' He laughed and put the thing back in his pocket. A walkie-talkie of some kind? Maybe a telephone?
An elevator with glass sides lifted us up the angled side of the building, high above West Hollywood. Twenty, thirty, forty stories. Hard to tell. The elevator moved without any sense of motion. The door opened onto a foyer that looked like the lobby of a small hotel, very private, very expensive. We stepped into a high-ceilinged gallery, with two or three levels of gardens and apartments. A wide waterfall splashed into a long shallow pool filled with lily pads and goldfish the size of terriers. The air smelled tropical.
'Which one?'
'To the left. Don't worry. We own the whole floor. Nobody gets in here without clearance.'
Double doors slid open at our approach. 'Take off your shoes,' said Eakins. 'Leave them here.' He ushered me into a room that felt way too large and pointed me toward an alcove lined with more ferns and fish tanks.
'What is this place?'
'It's a sanctuary.'
'A sanctuary?'
'In your terms -it's rest and recovery. In your time-a kind of hospital.'
'I'm not crazy.'
'Of course not. We're talking about orientation. Assimilation.' He pointed to a couch. 'Sit.' He went to a counter and poured two drinks. More of the same vanilla-peach stuff. He handed me one, sipped at the other. Sat down opposite. 'How hard do you think it would be for a man from 1900 to understand 1967?'
Thought about it.
'In 1900, the average person did not have electricity or incandescent lighting. He didn't have indoor plumbing. He didn't have running water, he had a hand pump. He didn't have a car, a radio, a television set. He didn't have a
